Lula with Bolsonaro on the scene – 03/28/2023 – Elio Gaspari

With expectations confirmed, starting this Thursday, Jair Bolsonaro will be in Brazil, looking for space to make a counterpoint to Lula. It will be an unprecedented situation, with a former president, defeated at the polls by a small margin (1.8% percentage points), opposing the incumbent. Until now, former presidents have retreated into elegant silence. Furthermore, Bolsonaro and Lula 3.0 have the common trait of a toxic aggressiveness towards political peace.

The former captain has been a troublemaker throughout his political career. In the four years of government, he fought with vaccines, with China and with electronic voting machines, to name just three examples. Lula, who defines himself as a “walking metamorphosis”, ran his campaign promising political pacification and entered the Plateau fighting with the president of the Central Bank and seeing Senator Sergio Moro “set up” in an investigation by the Federal Police.

Lula was elected by an arc of forces that defended democracy. Anyone who thinks this is a simple chatter should remember the afternoon of January 8th in Brasilia. The democratic arch is something different from the front of parties that supported Lula. In the first are people like former minister Pedro Malan. In the second is the strength of the Workers’ Party. Bolsonaro and the coup leaders brought these two blocks together, but since he took office, Lula has done little to maintain the arc. By the way of the carriage, it will do little.

Bolsonaro was fueled by anti-PT sentiment and was beaten by his irrational and erratic aggressiveness. Returning, he wants to lead the right that he took out of the closet, mobilized and ended up messing up. Perhaps he dreams of being a new Carlos Lacerda, whom the Frenchman Charles De Gaulle called the “demolisher” of presidents. Lacerda was a great governor of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The former captain lacks a similar legacy.

Bolsonaro returns smaller, not least because national conservatism already has two rational cadres: the governors of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, and of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema. The former president, however, needs to feed himself again with anti-PTism. He’s already stocked up on it, successfully. He needs the collaboration of the PT, and what is supposed to be the left, to grow again.

In a scenario in which Lula 3.0 and Bolsonaro share the scene, bad omens abound. They are brought about by the characteristics of two characters attracted by omnipotence. The former captain’s is in his DNA. Lula’s is recent and, in a way, punctual. As much as the reasons for Lula’s ill-will towards Sergio Moro are understood, her elevation to the category of fixed idea is useless and derogatory for a president. Lula’s ribs on Michel Temer show his willingness to narrow the arc of forces that are committed to democracy. The former president remained neutral in the dispute, defending his government, democracy and the Constitution. Attacking him was futile to say the least.

Bad omens crystallize in the risk of a debate of irrational polarizations. Brazil was once governed by a president who was hostile to vaccination during an epidemic. After the defeat, Bolsonaro said he would have done better if he had left Covid to his health minister. Apologize to Luiz Henrique Mandetta and Nelson Teich? No way.

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